Day: October 19, 2018
RAK Movement. Random Acts of Kindness. Do one today
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Life can get really busy – take some time out to spend with a family member
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Offer to babysit your siblings/cousins/nephews/nieces etc
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Surroundings looking messy? Tidy up the area around you
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Feed a stray animal if you spot one
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Know someone going through something you’ve been through? Give them advice
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Open the door for someone
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Support a small, local business as a customer
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Know someone who is not coping very well? Give them a call
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Be proactive – sign a petition for a good cause
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Feeling inspired? Make a meal for your family or roommates
10 Bizarre Things Criminals Did To Evade The Police – Listverse
RAK Movement Random Acts of Kindness
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Reconnect with your grandparents or an elderly person you know – give them a call!
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We walk past homeless people every day; can you spare them 5 minutes of your time?
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Treat a friend – buy them lunch!
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Purchase ethical goods
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Be someone’s shoulder to cry on
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Is that litter on the floor? Pick it up and bin it
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Oooh wait! There’s somebody behind you; hold the door open!
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Gift someone something they complimented you for
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Pick up somebody else’ tab next time you go for a coffee
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We all love surprises! Buy someone an unexpected gift
Startpreneurs’ FAv news letter
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Friday Sloganeer’s Poetry
We won’t contain it.
As always.
Eternal pursuit.
Think creative.
Fit for a queen.
Outside the box.
Your wish is our command.
Welcome.
Success.
Ahead of our time.
FUTURE-READY WORKERS? / Education / #12 / The 3DEXPERIENCE Magazine – 3DS Compass Mag
via FUTURE-READY WORKERS? / Education / #12 / The 3DEXPERIENCE Magazine – 3DS Compass Mag
FUTURE-READY WORKERS?Today’s schools struggle to prepare students for tomorrow’s workplaces, experts agree
A new report from the World Economic Forum suggests that today’s education systems are not adequately preparing children for the workplace of the future. Compass asked top educational experts from around the world how they would tackle the challenge.
The world of work is changing, and fast. The rise of technologies that include the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, 3D printing and blockchain are combining to create the Fourth Industrial Revolution, challenging the way industries operate and transforming their business models too.
This shift will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. According to the 2017 “Future of Jobs” report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), for example, one third of the skillsets required to perform work by 2020 will be wholly new.
Maurice de Hond is founder of the Steve JobsSchool in Amsterdam. Thirty SteveJobsSchools, named after the former Apple CEO, are operating in the Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa. The schools actively incorporate digital skills into their curricula.
“Education systems across the world are failing our children,” de Hond said. “The curricula is, on the whole, geared to a world that no longer exists. Thanks to the rise of digital technologies, we’re in the midst of the biggest revolution we’ve ever witnessed – but traditional establishments are still preparing our children for a business world of the past.”
THE STEM SHORTFALL
While the future world of work is shifting with each new technology introduction, one trend is already clear: tomorrow’s jobs will require greater science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) expertise.
“GLOBALLY, CLOUD AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING RANK AS THE TOP TWO SKILLS REQUIRED, BASED ON EMPLOYER DEMAND.”
COUNTRY MANAGER, LINKEDIN UK, AND VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING SOLUTIONS, LINKEDIN EMEA
According to 2016 research by the Australian government, in the next decade an estimated 75% of jobs in the fastest-growing industries will need STEM skills. However, according to an October 2017 report by Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times, the number of students enrolled in STEM-related programs in higher secondary and tertiary levels is on a decline.
“It’s no secret that there is a challenge of insufficient STEM education,” said Peter Balyta, president of Education Technology at Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI). “The number of US jobs in STEM fields is growing about three times faster than non-STEM jobs, with a projected 9 million STEM jobs needing to be filled by 2022.”
As a result, many organizations are looking to promote STEM subjects in schools. Private-sector companies, including TI and Honeywell, have invested in STEM-based initiatives. Meanwhile, a number of nonprofit and not-for-profit organizations have been established to tackle the challenge, including San Antonio-based SASTEMIC, a nonprofit organization focused on inspiring both students and teachers to embrace STEM subjects.
“We offer STEM educational services to students to expose them to STEM career opportunities that are available, which they might otherwise not have access to,” said Jake Lopez, the company’s executive director.
Proponents are especially focused on technology aspects of the STEM shortfall.
‘’Our data shows that, in nearly every industry across the globe, technology skills are becoming increasingly important to employers,” said Joshua Graff, country manager at LinkedIn UK and vice president of Marketing Solutions for the company in the EMEA region. “Globally, cloud and distributed computing rank as the top two skills required, based on employer demand, followed closely by statistical analysis and data mining. This means that, for the world’s educators, developing technology expertise should be the priority.’’
CODING IS KEY
Former US President Barack Obama highlighted the looming mismatch between employer needs and educational output in his 2016 State of the Union address, when he launched the Computer Science (CS) for All initiative and promoted funding for schools to close the digital gap.
“In the new economy, computer science isn’t an optional skill, it’s a basic skill,” Obama said in a video following his address. Coding, in particular, the former president said, is vital.
“I strongly believe every child has to have the opportunity to learn this critical skill,” Obama said in September 2017, during a national briefing organized by the CS for All Consortium. “We are inundated with technology, and I don’t want our young people to just be consumers. I want them to be producers of this technology and to understand it, to feel like they’re controlling it, as opposed to it controlling them.”
“THE ABILITY TO GAIN NEW KNOWLEDGE IS FAR MORE VALUABLE THAN THE KNOWLEDGE ITSELF.”
LEADER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE’S LEARN AND WORK FUTURES GROUP
Apple CEO Tim Cook seconds that goal.
“We think coding should be required in every school because it’s as important as any kind of second language,” he said on a recent visit to Woodberry Down Community Primary School in Harringay, UK. “With a knowledge of coding, children may help find solutions to tomorrow’s problems.”
Despite the increased focus, however, TI’s Balyta believes that something is not working.
“For more than a decade, businesses, nonprofits, community groups, concerned parents and civic leaders have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours to help improve and advance STEM education,” he said. “The sad truth is we’re not yet getting a great return on our investment.”
THE NEED FOR REAL-WORLD SKILLS
Parminder K. Jassal, who leads the Institute for the Future’s Learn and Work Futures Group in California, sees a dark flip side to the emphasis on coding.
“While STEM and coding skills are an important part of the basic skills needed for the future, they are not the key,” she said. “By simply having coding skills, a person might end up having the new blue-collar job of the future – a contract programmer. This job would be similar to factory workers and other manual laborers of the past century and some today. What’s really needed is for the education system to foster future work skills – proficiencies and abilities that will be required across different jobs and work settings. The ability to gain new knowledge is far more valuable than the knowledge itself.”
“EDUCATION SYSTEMS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN.”
FOUNDER OF STEVE JOBSSCHOOL, AMSTERDAM
Singapore Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung also emphasizes a need for lifelong learning skills.
“Besides being a pathway into good jobs and lifelong employability, education also needs to be a journey to fulfill hopes and aspirations,” he said in a March 2017 speech to Singapore’s Parliament. “The two need not be at odds with one another. Education must impart skills, not just information and knowledge. This is for a simple reason – information can be Googled; skills cannot.”
A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
A similar emphasis on practical skills led to the inception of Big Picture Learning, co-founded in Rhode Island by educators Elliot Washor and Dennis Littky, who wanted to demonstrate the need for radical changes in education.
“Today’s traditional schools only think about certifying students in academics or career pathways inside the school,” Washor said. “They do not pay attention to whether (students) can do the work in the real world, and they are not paying attention to what students do outside of school that might be developing real-world skills.”
“IN THE NEW ECONOMY, COMPUTER SCIENCE ISN’T AN OPTIONAL SKILL, IT’S A BASIC SKILL.”
FORMER US PRESIDENT
In contrast, he said, Big Picture Learning starts with students’ interests, involves their families and mentors and then develops a college and career pathway plan to help students develop their interests and achieve their goals.
“We have students leave the school building to learn and work with mentors around their interests two days a week,” Washor said. “We focus on real-world certifications before they leave high school and help them accrue college credits while they are in high school that are connected to people and places who know them outside of school and can get them work.”
The Steve JobsSchools take a similar approach.
“Recognizing that success in the future requires an understanding of the basic skills that workers in the future will need, our approach is not about teaching information but about teaching problem solving,” de Hond said. “We focus on three key principles: find, filter and apply. Flexibility is also very important; we concentrate much more on the talents and possibilities of the individual pupils.”
By taking inspiration from these success stories and using experience-led approaches to teach children how to learn, these innovators agree that educators can empower students with the skills they need to tackle problems and independently develop solutions once they arrive in the workplace.
“As new approaches and new technologies emerge, funding and experiments are necessary for identifying the most effective models with potential to scale and create meaningful change in education,” WEF’s Leopold said. “Successful approaches will empower students to be lifelong learners who take ownership of their upskilling throughout their lifetimes.”
FIVE KEY SKILLS THAT EDUCATORS SHOULD FOSTER
Parminder K. Jassal, who leads The Institute for the Future’s Learn and Work Futures Group, outlines the top five skills that she believes will pave the way for success in the future workplace:
1. Reputation management: In a digital future, personal data will reveal a lot about us and drive our lives. As a result, we need to manage and cultivate reputation rather than leaving it to chance.
2. Human-machine collaboration: The nimble ability to integrate lightweight automation tools into our work, learning and home lives will become crucial.
3. Living in a peer-produced world: Our future well-being comes not only from what we can do as individuals, but from what we can do together.
4. Sense making: As smart machines take over routine manufacturing and service jobs, employers will demand the kinds of skills that remain difficult for machines to perform. These include higher-level thinking skills that cannot yet be codified.
5. Resilience in extreme environments: The ability to accept that change, mistakes and failure happen and to effectively bounce back will help students adapt to continual change.
Life line Express
Good morning Patrons ,
*Life line * health on rail in news and we from nayonika eye care charitable trust going to manage eye health from oct 20,2018
Coffee now may help with this very common skin problem | Ladders
News: Malaysian labour woes: gender gap, foreign dependence, low R&D investment — People Matters
Malaysian labour woes: gender gap, foreign dependence, low R&D investment
The Malaysian labour market faces challenges such as a gender disparity, heavy reliance on foreign workers and slow growth of human capital. The Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) suggests some ways to put Malaysia on the fast track.If 30 percent more women entered the Malaysian labour market, the country’s GDP would increase by upto 12 percent, according to a recent State of the Household study released by Khazanah Research Institute (KRI).
Gender inequality in the Malaysian labour market still remains a reality. Starting from lower participation in the workforce to higher unemployment, lower pay and fewer senior positions held by women, the labour market still remains heavily male-dominated.
Women take up a major chunk of housework in Malaysia thus resulting in lower participation in the workforce.
In 2017, 58 percent i.e. 2.8 million women opted out of the labor market in favor of housework. At the same time, only 3.2 percent i.e. 69,800 men remained out of the workforce in order to fulfill household chores.
The number of self-employed workers has increased in Malaysia. However, the KRI’s findings suggest that there needs to be a middle ground between self-employment and mainstream job opportunities to ensure that women have long-term financial security. This is one of the several “structural challenges” mentioned in the study.
An aging population is also a major challenge faced in Malaysia, and bridging the gender gap considerably within the next decade would go a long way in putting the country on a fast track towards economic development.
The KRI’s study found that the number of foreign workers in Malaysia increased from 1.7 million in 2010 to 2.1 million by 2013. However, foreign workers and local Malaysians do not compete for jobs in the labor market.
Immigration has led to an increase in employment opportunities in various sectors of the labor market. It is observed that Malaysians are moving into senior roles with better pay while foreign workers are occupying jobs at the bottom of the corporate food chain.
The effect of foreign workers might not be immediately felt on the labour market. However, in the long run, heavier dependence on foreign workers might lead to slower adoption to technological advances. Such economies are likely to favour cheap labour over implementing tech that can automate certain tasks easily, according to the report.
Investment in research & tech
In order for Malaysia to grow from its agriculturally dependant roots and turn into an advanced high-income economy, it needs to increase its investment in research. At the moment, just 1.1 percent of GDP is dedicated towards research and development. To grow into a knowledge-based country, the focus area needs to shift towards innovations and providing a structural framework to help entrepreneurs succeed.
Building a strong human capital
Workers who have a tertiary education are higher in supply as compared to the demand in the Malaysian labour market. The demand is high for low-skilled workers as opposed to highly educated individuals.
Malaysian students spend 12 years in school but it accounts only for 9 years worth of schooling based on the education quality.
Creating a high-income country requires a human capital that continues to improve in terms of productivity, maintains a graph of growth and can rapidly adapt to changing technology. The need of the hour is to create a workforce which cannot be replaced by tech, rather is equipped to adapt and innovate with tech, as per the study.
Enhanced human capital cannot exist in a vacuum. It needs the support of new infrastructure, internet services and scalable online management systems that are equipped to take on the rising demands of Malaysians.
via News: Malaysian labour woes: gender gap, foreign dependence, low R&D investment — People Matters
10 Facts About The Moment Of Death From Modern Science – Listverse
Idioms of the day
A Promise Now Broken Is Best Not Spoken.
Checking Your Watch Every Minute.
Being Sick On Your Birthday.
Shed A Tear To See More Clear.
Like Trying To Teach A Fish To Fly.
Free verse – Imagination
Imagination
Free verse by jay
An ingenuity, however hard it tries,
Will always be infinite.
Now myriad is just the thing,
To get me wondering if the ingenuity is absolute.
Creativeness, however hard they try,
Will always be imaginative.
Do creativeness make you shiver?
do they?
The imagine that’s really cunning,
Above all others are the fancy.
Clank. clank, clank.
Invention, however hard they try,
Will always be little.
Invention are shrimpy. invention are teeny,
invention are midget, however.
All that is uncreative is not thinking,
thinking, by all account is creative.
Do thinking make you shiver?
do they?
I cannot help but stop and look at sheer imagery.
Do imagery make you shiver?
do they?
Academic Cow :)
Cow – A Haiku
by jay
An academic cow snaps
enjoying the queen
One-Liner Dirty Joke
One Liner Joke
Overheard: one saggy boob say to the other saggy boob if we don’t get support people are going to think we’re nuts
Reflections on #MeToo, From a Founder of the Women’s Liberation Movement
RAK- Random acts of kindness – Do one today
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Help someone carry their pushchair up/down the stairs
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Fight climate change – go vegetarian for today!
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Purchase ethical goods
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Google ‘survey for charity’ and complete one. They receive money for every one you fill out!
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Oooh wait! There’s somebody behind you; hold the door open!
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We rarely listen to others – ask someone about their day
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Treat a friend – buy them lunch!
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Surprise your parents with flowers
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Leave a kind message anywhere (in a library book, on a computer etc.)
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Remember that friend you haven’t seen for ages? Give them a call
Startpreneurs’ FAv news letter
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How the U.N. Climate Change Report Could Serve as a Wake-up Call
Govt launches Pradhan Mantri Anndata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA)
Govt launches Pradhan Mantri Anndata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA)
http://www.narendramodi.in/category/infographics
via NaMo App
Retail apocalypse continues as Sears files for bankruptcy – Big Think
Humanitarian Leadership Academy | Preparing the next generation of humanitarians
7 amazing Japanese words English needs to borrow
7 brilliant Japanese words we need in English
Ever wanted to describe precisely how crummy you feel after a bad haircut?
MATTHEW DAVIS
17 October, 2018
English is a phenomenal language, but there are circumstances where words seem to fail us.
Often, other languages have already found a solution to expressing the complicated ideas that can’t be succinctly conveyed in English.
If you’ve ever wanted to describe the anguish of a bad haircut, the pleasure of walking in the woods, or the satisfaction of finding your life’s purpose, read on.
Don’t get me wrong. The English language has some very excellent words. There’s petrichor, the pleasant smell of the first rain after warm and dry weather. Paraprosdokian—which describes sentences that end surprisingly, forcing the reader to reinterpret the first half—is both oddly specific and fantastic to say out loud. I’m even a fan of new inventions, like tweetstorm, even if I’m not a fan of the experience.But English-speaking culture—like any culture—has a limited perspective on the world. Just like English, Japanese also has some five-star words that English could stand to borrow. The Japanese have an entirely different perspective on the world than many English-speaking cultures—as proof, it’s tough to imagine that the politely reserved Japanese have a word for defenestrate, or the act of throwing somebody out of a window. Here’s the top 7 Japanese words that we could use in English.
1. Ikigai
(Flickr user Raul Pacheco-Vega)
Literally translating to “life value,” Ikigai is best understood as the reason somebody gets up in the morning—somebody’s reason for living. It’s a combination of what you are good at, what you get paid to do, what you love to do, and what the world needs.
We often find our ikigai during flow states, which occur when a given task is just challenging and absorbing enough that we forget time has passed, that “in the zone” sensation. But it’s more nuanced than something that is simply absorbing or a passion; it’s a fulfilling kind of work that benefits oneself and others.
2. Karoshi
Karoshi, or death from overwork, provides a nice contrast to the concept of ikigai. Japan’s work culture is so over the top that dying from working too hard is not uncommon. This word covers a range of ailments from heart failure to suicide, so long as the root of their cause is in working too hard.
As another hardworking nation, the U.S. could stand to better appreciate the dangers of overwork. Americans put in an average 47 hours a week, which is demonstrably bad for our health.
3. Shinrin-yoku
(Flickr user jungle_group)
This word translates to “forest-bathing,” which sums up the activity fairly well. It’s getting outdoors to de-stress, relax, and promote well-being. While the concept is familiar, we clearly don’t place enough importance on getting outdoors to honor it with its own term.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spend about 87% of their time indoors, which is clearly too much. Meanwhile, being in nature is associated with a slew of benefits, like improving memory, reducing stress and anxiety, and even lowering inflammation. Scotland has the right idea—doctors in Shetland can now prescribe nature to their patients.
4. Shikata ga nai
Used interchangeably with shouganai, this term roughly means “it cannot be helped.” You can think of it as the Japanese equivalent of c’est la vie´or amor fati. It’s the idea that one should accept things outside of one’s control with dignity and grace and not implode from the pressure of having no control over a terrible situation.This concept is a bit controversial. During the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-Americans resigned themselves to their mistreatment, characterizing the situation as shikata ga nai.
On the other hand, when a tsunami devastated Japan in 2011, many outside observers commented upon the stoic way the Japanese carried on with their daily lives, an example of the positive side of shikata ga nai.
5. Tsundoku
(pexels.com)
While it’s a little less high-minded than the previous words on this list, it’s certainly one that I and others could use. A combination of tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books), tsundoku is the practice of buying a book you swear you’re going to read, obviously not doing that, finding a new book you swear you’re going to read, and then letting these abandoned books pile up in your house until it’s a certifiable fire hazard.
6. Irusu
Garden State (2004)
You’re in a terrible, anti-social mood and don’t want to see anybody at all today. Suddenly, your doorbell rings; you lie as still as possible in your bed (surrounded by the hordes of unread books you purchased), praying the unwanted visitor leaves. This is the practice of irusu, or pretending not to be home when somebody rings your doorbell. It’s a very common experience, although maybe the modern-day equivalent is responding “Sorry, I just got this” hours after you actually saw a text.
7. Age-otori
Not everybody practices tsundoku, and I’m sure some extroverts are entirely unfamiliar with practicing irusu, but everybody can identify with getting a bad haircut. Age-otori is the feeling one gets after leaving a barbershop looking worse than you did going in. It’s an ingenious word for the unique blend of regret, suffering, and shame you feel after you foolishly trusted your elderly barber when he said “Yeah, I can do a hard part.”Bonus words
While Japanese has some phenomenal words, there are some that the English language probably doesn’t have need of. For example, a nito-onna is a woman so obsessed with her job that she doesn’t have time to iron her blouses and so resorts to wearing knitted tops constantly. It’s a wonderfully specific word, but its specificity probably doesn’t translate to English-speaking contexts.There’s also the hikikomori, a mostly Japanese phenomenon involving modern-day hermits that don’t leave their bedrooms for years and years. People like this exist in English-speaking contexts, but we generally characterize these as people suffering from anxiety, as loners, or hermits. In addition, part of what makes a hikikomori is the high pressure and highly ritualized nature of Japanese society, a feature that is mostly absent in English-speaking contexts.
So, write to our good friends Merriam and Webster. Let’s see if we can pack a little more utility into the English language.
asia philosophy speech work world cultures spoken word grammar language
Top 10 Professional Child Hit Men – Listverse
Intelligence
DEFINITION SERIES
SL NO -58- INTELLIGENCE
On March 25th 1926, Meher Baba gave the following discourse on intelligence – the use of knowledge by the mind in the state of thinking:
Intelligence not thinking is unconsciousness and may be likened to sound sleep. Thinking and imagination are latent in intelligence. When intelligence thinks of itself, it realizes Its Self and is God. When it thinks about imagination, it is the world, mind, body and ignorance.
For example, take a gramophone record. When it is not being played, it is in a state similar to sound sleep, as is unconscious intelligence; but when the phonograph needle is put on the record, it starts to play. This is like the thinking of imagination that is latent in intelligence and becomes manifest while the mind is thinking.
Take as another example an ocean to represent intelligence, which is calm water at first. But when the wind blows – the desire of intelligence to know Itself – there is movement in the still waters. Intelligence begins to think, forming numerous waves, and the result is an uncountable number of bubbles. When intelligence starts thinking, it creates waves – universes. These universes in turn form bubbles – different worlds.
Baba then put some water in a big bucket and turned a glass upside down in it. He continued:
Although the same water is in the glass as in the bucket, its quantity is limited. Similarly, the ocean is in the bubble; intelligence is in imagination, but limited.
The whole world is enmeshed in the grip of lust for women and wealth, while the real aim of life is to achieve the Truth. Unless God is realized, the purpose of acquiring a human body is frustrated, and the real object of life remains unfulfilled.
But Realization is impossible until intelligence is purified and freed of imagination. This can only be achieved by keeping the company of saints. For this reason, intimate contact with a Master is always necessary for Realization. But such Perfect Ones are very, very rare, while the world abounds with numerous hypocrites and frauds who pose as divine guides. How can one who has not had the experience of Truth guide others toward it?
Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 3, pp. 786 – 787.
Vitamin D: millions of Americans take it and most should just stop – Vox
Beware of snakes…desires
Beware of Snakes — Desires.
Eruch Jessawala was asked this question: ‘Just before Meher Baba commenced His silence He told His close ones to “Beware of snakes, always carry a lamp with you”.’ What does this mean?’
Eruch replied, figuratively He said these things, it is all symbolic. Snakes mean our desires — things that imperceptibly enter into us and poison us. Carry a lamp with you all the time — that is the lamp of His love, His remembrance, His name — so that desires won’t harm you. Baba said, ‘If you don’t have a lamp, and they bite you then I am helpless — you fall — you succumb. So always carry the lamp of My love, My name, My remembrance, so that it will throw light upon the situation, and you will know it to be what it is.’ Beware of it.
Worse than the rattle snakes and the cobras are those snakes we harbour within ourselves. The abundance of our desires — however, we feel as if nothing is there. Yet all the time we are imbibing the poison from them. So we must beware of them. If instead of submitting to our desires, we think of Him, remember Him, repeat His name… ‘do only those actions that you would not hesitate to do in My presence’… then we rise above our desires in remembrance of Him. They become weaker and our love for Him becomes stronger.
Practical Spirituality With Meher Baba, p 194-95 ( e-book)
By John A Grant
Copyright C 1985, John A. Grant.
Meher Baba Sketch By Claire Mataira
Photo Courtesy of David and Glenda Hobson
If Humility Is So Important, Why Are Leaders So Arrogant?
FUTURE-READY WORKERS? / Education / #12 / The 3DEXPERIENCE Magazine – 3DS Compass Mag
via FUTURE-READY WORKERS? / Education / #12 / The 3DEXPERIENCE Magazine – 3DS Compass Mag
FUTURE-READY WORKERS?Today’s schools struggle to prepare students for tomorrow’s workplaces, experts agree
A new report from the World Economic Forum suggests that today’s education systems are not adequately preparing children for the workplace of the future. Compass asked top educational experts from around the world how they would tackle the challenge.
The world of work is changing, and fast. The rise of technologies that include the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, 3D printing and blockchain are combining to create the Fourth Industrial Revolution, challenging the way industries operate and transforming their business models too.
This shift will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. According to the 2017 “Future of Jobs” report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), for example, one third of the skillsets required to perform work by 2020 will be wholly new.
“Many of today’s education systems are disconnected from the skills needed to function in today’s labor markets,” said Till Leopold, project lead for Education, Gender and Work for the WEF in Geneva, Switzerland. “And the exponential rate of technological and economic change brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution is further increasing the gap between education and labor markets.”
Maurice de Hond is founder of the Steve JobsSchool in Amsterdam. Thirty SteveJobsSchools, named after the former Apple CEO, are operating in the Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa. The schools actively incorporate digital skills into their curricula.
“Education systems across the world are failing our children,” de Hond said. “The curricula is, on the whole, geared to a world that no longer exists. Thanks to the rise of digital technologies, we’re in the midst of the biggest revolution we’ve ever witnessed – but traditional establishments are still preparing our children for a business world of the past.”
THE STEM SHORTFALL
While the future world of work is shifting with each new technology introduction, one trend is already clear: tomorrow’s jobs will require greater science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) expertise.
“GLOBALLY, CLOUD AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING RANK AS THE TOP TWO SKILLS REQUIRED, BASED ON EMPLOYER DEMAND.”
COUNTRY MANAGER, LINKEDIN UK, AND VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING SOLUTIONS, LINKEDIN EMEA
According to 2016 research by the Australian government, in the next decade an estimated 75% of jobs in the fastest-growing industries will need STEM skills. However, according to an October 2017 report by Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times, the number of students enrolled in STEM-related programs in higher secondary and tertiary levels is on a decline.
“It’s no secret that there is a challenge of insufficient STEM education,” said Peter Balyta, president of Education Technology at Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI). “The number of US jobs in STEM fields is growing about three times faster than non-STEM jobs, with a projected 9 million STEM jobs needing to be filled by 2022.”
As a result, many organizations are looking to promote STEM subjects in schools. Private-sector companies, including TI and Honeywell, have invested in STEM-based initiatives. Meanwhile, a number of nonprofit and not-for-profit organizations have been established to tackle the challenge, including San Antonio-based SASTEMIC, a nonprofit organization focused on inspiring both students and teachers to embrace STEM subjects.
“We offer STEM educational services to students to expose them to STEM career opportunities that are available, which they might otherwise not have access to,” said Jake Lopez, the company’s executive director.
Proponents are especially focused on technology aspects of the STEM shortfall.
‘’Our data shows that, in nearly every industry across the globe, technology skills are becoming increasingly important to employers,” said Joshua Graff, country manager at LinkedIn UK and vice president of Marketing Solutions for the company in the EMEA region. “Globally, cloud and distributed computing rank as the top two skills required, based on employer demand, followed closely by statistical analysis and data mining. This means that, for the world’s educators, developing technology expertise should be the priority.’’
CODING IS KEY
Former US President Barack Obama highlighted the looming mismatch between employer needs and educational output in his 2016 State of the Union address, when he launched the Computer Science (CS) for All initiative and promoted funding for schools to close the digital gap.
“In the new economy, computer science isn’t an optional skill, it’s a basic skill,” Obama said in a video following his address. Coding, in particular, the former president said, is vital.
“I strongly believe every child has to have the opportunity to learn this critical skill,” Obama said in September 2017, during a national briefing organized by the CS for All Consortium. “We are inundated with technology, and I don’t want our young people to just be consumers. I want them to be producers of this technology and to understand it, to feel like they’re controlling it, as opposed to it controlling them.”
“THE ABILITY TO GAIN NEW KNOWLEDGE IS FAR MORE VALUABLE THAN THE KNOWLEDGE ITSELF.”
LEADER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE’S LEARN AND WORK FUTURES GROUP
Apple CEO Tim Cook seconds that goal.
“We think coding should be required in every school because it’s as important as any kind of second language,” he said on a recent visit to Woodberry Down Community Primary School in Harringay, UK. “With a knowledge of coding, children may help find solutions to tomorrow’s problems.”
Despite the increased focus, however, TI’s Balyta believes that something is not working.
“For more than a decade, businesses, nonprofits, community groups, concerned parents and civic leaders have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours to help improve and advance STEM education,” he said. “The sad truth is we’re not yet getting a great return on our investment.”
THE NEED FOR REAL-WORLD SKILLS
Parminder K. Jassal, who leads the Institute for the Future’s Learn and Work Futures Group in California, sees a dark flip side to the emphasis on coding.
“While STEM and coding skills are an important part of the basic skills needed for the future, they are not the key,” she said. “By simply having coding skills, a person might end up having the new blue-collar job of the future – a contract programmer. This job would be similar to factory workers and other manual laborers of the past century and some today. What’s really needed is for the education system to foster future work skills – proficiencies and abilities that will be required across different jobs and work settings. The ability to gain new knowledge is far more valuable than the knowledge itself.”
“EDUCATION SYSTEMS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN.”
FOUNDER OF STEVE JOBSSCHOOL, AMSTERDAM
Singapore Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung also emphasizes a need for lifelong learning skills.
“Besides being a pathway into good jobs and lifelong employability, education also needs to be a journey to fulfill hopes and aspirations,” he said in a March 2017 speech to Singapore’s Parliament. “The two need not be at odds with one another. Education must impart skills, not just information and knowledge. This is for a simple reason – information can be Googled; skills cannot.”
A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
A similar emphasis on practical skills led to the inception of Big Picture Learning, co-founded in Rhode Island by educators Elliot Washor and Dennis Littky, who wanted to demonstrate the need for radical changes in education.
“Today’s traditional schools only think about certifying students in academics or career pathways inside the school,” Washor said. “They do not pay attention to whether (students) can do the work in the real world, and they are not paying attention to what students do outside of school that might be developing real-world skills.”
“IN THE NEW ECONOMY, COMPUTER SCIENCE ISN’T AN OPTIONAL SKILL, IT’S A BASIC SKILL.”
FORMER US PRESIDENT
In contrast, he said, Big Picture Learning starts with students’ interests, involves their families and mentors and then develops a college and career pathway plan to help students develop their interests and achieve their goals.
“We have students leave the school building to learn and work with mentors around their interests two days a week,” Washor said. “We focus on real-world certifications before they leave high school and help them accrue college credits while they are in high school that are connected to people and places who know them outside of school and can get them work.”
The Steve JobsSchools take a similar approach.
“Recognizing that success in the future requires an understanding of the basic skills that workers in the future will need, our approach is not about teaching information but about teaching problem solving,” de Hond said. “We focus on three key principles: find, filter and apply. Flexibility is also very important; we concentrate much more on the talents and possibilities of the individual pupils.”
By taking inspiration from these success stories and using experience-led approaches to teach children how to learn, these innovators agree that educators can empower students with the skills they need to tackle problems and independently develop solutions once they arrive in the workplace.
“As new approaches and new technologies emerge, funding and experiments are necessary for identifying the most effective models with potential to scale and create meaningful change in education,” WEF’s Leopold said. “Successful approaches will empower students to be lifelong learners who take ownership of their upskilling throughout their lifetimes.”
FIVE KEY SKILLS THAT EDUCATORS SHOULD FOSTER
Parminder K. Jassal, who leads The Institute for the Future’s Learn and Work Futures Group, outlines the top five skills that she believes will pave the way for success in the future workplace:
1. Reputation management: In a digital future, personal data will reveal a lot about us and drive our lives. As a result, we need to manage and cultivate reputation rather than leaving it to chance.
2. Human-machine collaboration: The nimble ability to integrate lightweight automation tools into our work, learning and home lives will become crucial.
3. Living in a peer-produced world: Our future well-being comes not only from what we can do as individuals, but from what we can do together.
4. Sense making: As smart machines take over routine manufacturing and service jobs, employers will demand the kinds of skills that remain difficult for machines to perform. These include higher-level thinking skills that cannot yet be codified.
5. Resilience in extreme environments: The ability to accept that change, mistakes and failure happen and to effectively bounce back will help students adapt to continual change.
Anti Modi view from Cato Institute newsletter
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Did you know…
… that today is the birthday of the La Leche League? La Leche League International was founded in 1956 when a group of women met for the first time in the home of Mary White. This group provides info to breastfeeding mothers and has been helping thousands of mothers and babies all over the world for more than 60 years.
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Today’s Inspirational Quote:
“If you get tired, learn to rest. Not to quit.”
— Banksy
10 Popular Websites That Were (Or Are) Blocked In Other Countries – Listverse
5 Things I’m Telling My Kids to Prepare Them for the Future | Longitudes
Are You Coachable? – InspireYourPeople.com
Did you know..
Did you know…
… that today is Samuel Morse Day? In 1842, Samuel F.B. Morse laid the first telegraph cable between Battery and Governor’s Islands in New York harbor. He was also co-inventor of the Morse code, an alphabetic code of long and short sounds. The long sounds are referred to as dashes, while the short sounds are dots. Dash. Dot, Dot, Dash. (That’s Thank You to the rest of us!)
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Today’s Inspirational Quote:
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
— Will Rogers